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What is IIFYM (If It fits Your Macros)? Flexible Dieting Explained

3,718 views · Published 30 March 2016 · 10:14 · Indexed 28 September 2026

Channel: Mario Tomic · 2016 · Howto & Style

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What is IIFYM or so-called if it fits your macros?

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IIFYM approach to managing nutrition has been popularized lately and a lot of people are still not sure what it actually means or where it came from.

Also, one big problem with the whole IIFYM and flexible dieting approach are that people will greatly miss the context of how to properly apply this and structure a healthy diet.

And this is what you'll often hear guys asking "Does diet quality even matter?" or "If it's just about calories and macros why don't I eat fast processed food all day?".

This is where problems start occurring. There's a lack of definition what a healthy diet really looks like. And that's something I wanted to address in this video taking my own diet as an example.

Related videos:

IIFYM Diet Setup - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIFRY_--YuU

How to Start Flexible Dieting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5w0xUjp5lI

How to Get Ripped Guide - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgFYA_v59NU

How Much Protein To Eat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-OVCYPWj3U

Key Points:
A healthy diet is made out of 80-90% of healthy whole unprocessed foods with a 10-20% of whatever foods you like to eat.

And additionally, a healthy diet will match your calorie, macro-nutrient, fiber, and micro-nutrient goals.

Regardless of whether you eat processed junk food or unprocessed whole food if you don't eat the right amount of calories/protein to match your goal you won't be able to reach it.

You CAN gain weight eating 100% healthy unprocessed food, food is still calories. Many have forgotten this.

And secondly, if you base your diet mainly on processed food you will feel bad and you less likely to have great health and well-being.

So let's define a healthy diet.

A healthy diet contains a variety of protein, carbohydrates, fats and fiber sources to get a wide range of nutrients needed for optimal health.

That last 10-20% flexibility is where the IIFYM (if it fits your macros) comes to play. Because it's okay to have a hamburger once or twice a week if you fit it into your calories and macros. It's okay to have fries, pizza and ice cream once in a while if you fit it into your daily targets.

This means you can still enjoy some of these "unhealthy" foods as long as you keep track of your calories and macros.

And what got us in trouble with this approach is that people were thinking black and white. Eating a little bit of junk food now turned into basing their whole diet on processed food.

Obviously like any other form of extremism, this doesn't end well for the individual.

IIFYM first originated based in the days when forums were first popular.

At this time the bodybuilding nutrition world was still in its early stages and people would often have a very narrow list of foods they would consume.

The forums would often be topics like "I'm out of brown rice, can I eat white rice?" or "Is drinking a glass of milk before workout okay?" or "Can I eat pasta with my chicken?" etc...

The most knowledgeable posters, those who knew that it really comes down to calories and macros would often reply "if it fits your macros it's fine". Eventually, this turned into an acronym IIFYM.

That's how IIFYM was born.

Interestingly when they did studies on this bodybuilding that ate "clean" they often found a lot of nutrient deficiencies because their food list was very narrow.

Keep this in mind when you structure your own diet.

A diet should include a variety of different unprocessed foods to make sure these nutrient deficiencies are avoided.

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